tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39018913826150458502018-02-15T14:23:51.266-06:00DesaraeV - Desarae VeitDiaries of Senior UI/UX Designer Desarae Veit who loves to read, write, travel, and so much more. Hobbies include aviation, yoga, scuba diving, barre, and art or craft projects. Blog includes Book Reviews and Gadget Reviews.Desarae Veitnoreply@blogger.comBlogger319125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-20086669034383585902018-02-02T19:26:00.001-06:002018-02-02T19:26:26.992-06:00Chat with Mike Boardley<div style="width: 480px; height: 270px; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" seamless="seamless" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitAllowFullScreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" id="okplayer" width="480" height="270" src="http://youtube.com/embed/vdTQkrId1M4" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 480px; height: 270px;" name="okplayer"></iframe></div><br />These are the video diaries of ux/ui designer @Desaraev and her cutie pie yorkshire puppy. Some of it is entertaining, maybe dull, maybe just a review but that is all part of day to day life. Live, learn, watch and subscribe. Please leave your feedback in the comments! See more of Yorkie Charles at http://twitter.com/yorkiecharles Follow @Desaraev at http://twitter.com/desaraev Find us on Facebook at http://bit.ly/12GE8HG Instagram @Desaraev http://bit.ly/lJglE8 http://bit.ly/jTznmx<br />https://youtu.be/vdTQkrId1M4 Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-64558212725203151942018-02-02T18:31:00.001-06:002018-02-02T18:31:37.064-06:00Technology Q&A<div style="width: 480px; height: 270px; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" seamless="seamless" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitAllowFullScreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" id="okplayer" width="480" height="270" src="http://youtube.com/embed/j8jsNVhNFYc" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 480px; height: 270px;" name="okplayer"></iframe></div><br />These are the video diaries of ux/ui designer @Desaraev and her cutie pie yorkshire puppy. Some of it is entertaining, maybe dull, maybe just a review but that is all part of day to day life. Live, learn, watch and subscribe. Please leave your feedback in the comments! See more of Yorkie Charles at http://twitter.com/yorkiecharles Follow @Desaraev at http://twitter.com/desaraev Find us on Facebook at http://bit.ly/12GE8HG Instagram @Desaraev http://bit.ly/lJglE8 http://bit.ly/jTznmx<br />https://youtu.be/j8jsNVhNFYc Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-11252728699388410322018-02-02T17:16:00.003-06:002018-02-02T17:16:32.959-06:00Tech Q&A<div style="width: 480px; height: 270px; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" seamless="seamless" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitAllowFullScreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" id="okplayer" width="480" height="270" src="http://youtube.com/embed/WM2rwk2OWBE" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 480px; height: 270px;" name="okplayer"></iframe></div><br />These are the video diaries of ux/ui designer @Desaraev and her cutie pie yorkshire puppy. Some of it is entertaining, maybe dull, maybe just a review but that is all part of day to day life. Live, learn, watch and subscribe. Please leave your feedback in the comments! See more of Yorkie Charles at http://twitter.com/yorkiecharles Follow @Desaraev at http://twitter.com/desaraev Find us on Facebook at http://bit.ly/12GE8HG Instagram @Desaraev http://bit.ly/lJglE8 http://bit.ly/jTznmx<br />https://youtu.be/WM2rwk2OWBE Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-61727371500327231412018-02-02T17:16:00.001-06:002018-02-02T17:16:31.816-06:00Tech Q&A<div style="width: 480px; height: 270px; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" seamless="seamless" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitAllowFullScreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" id="okplayer" width="480" height="270" src="http://youtube.com/embed/Ph9AvgJ3Ov0" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 480px; height: 270px;" name="okplayer"></iframe></div><br />These are the video diaries of ux/ui designer @Desaraev and her cutie pie yorkshire puppy. Some of it is entertaining, maybe dull, maybe just a review but that is all part of day to day life. Live, learn, watch and subscribe. Please leave your feedback in the comments! See more of Yorkie Charles at http://twitter.com/yorkiecharles Follow @Desaraev at http://twitter.com/desaraev Find us on Facebook at http://bit.ly/12GE8HG Instagram @Desaraev http://bit.ly/lJglE8 http://bit.ly/jTznmx<br />https://youtu.be/Ph9AvgJ3Ov0 Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-44384279186804062112018-01-30T15:50:00.000-06:002018-01-30T15:50:47.138-06:0012 Strong Movie Review<img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bVDKl55rAQY/WnDogc9mIxI/AAAAAAABMUg/26L0Ck4aHMsMOuoWSeUQaGocH_6Dga1kACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-01-30%2Bat%2B3.49.31%2BPM.png" data-original-width="1310" data-original-height="684" alt="12 Strong Movie Review" style="width: 100%; max-width: 100%;"/> <p>This was a heart wrenching high action movie about 12 men who went into Afghanistan to try to end terrorism on the United States. It showed men fighting on horses in a war that seemed out of place. Men who became unlikely allies. If you watch this movie, you will likely be surprised at the tone, because it's not overly dramatic or sad.</p> <p>I recommend this movie and give it a solid 5 stars. I loved it and left with a newfound respect for those men and love for our soldiers. It is sad to know what is going on around the world right now, the courage and compassion that these men show. Plus Chris Hemsworth plays the lead role.</p> Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-44725042681650627142018-01-26T19:17:00.003-06:002018-01-26T19:17:20.913-06:00Building a small business tech q and a<div style="width: 480px; height: 270px; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" seamless="seamless" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitAllowFullScreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" id="okplayer" width="480" height="270" src="http://youtube.com/embed/iG_AjMLfAKQ" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 480px; height: 270px;" name="okplayer"></iframe></div><br />More details on the items discussed: http://bit.ly/2njuxuy Business IT Q&amp;A I am looking to start a conversation via video podcasts to connect my friends and business contacts. The podcast will initially be centered around answering IT questions in my wheelhouse. Topic Ideas: personal branding, building a business online, how to sell things online, social media management, SEO (search engine optimization), websites, BI (business intelligence), AI (artificial intelligence), front-end development, UX (user experience) and machine learning. I’d like to introduce my friends who have small businesses, start the conversation rolling and see where this goes. Thinking a video once a week (until I start podcasting and more by request) next one at 4PM on Friday. If you have questions, feedback, or topic ideas please leave me a comment!!! Information mentioned in this weeks video: Top Website Platforms (question by Zachary Bales-Henry) • WordPress is a free CMS (content management system) it’s easy to use and easy to setup just be sure to keep your hosting and platform up to date or pay someone to manage it. It’s PHP based and open source. Lots of free plugins to quickly customize your website but more plugins can slow down your site and cause vulnerabilities. Ecommerce plug-ins for WordPress - Shopify. • Blogger/Blogspot was created by Google. It’s free to use and very simple. Great for monetizing a blog. A little complicated to customize and a pain to add CSS. No plugin or api integrations. You cannot easily do Ecommerce on blogger. • Drupal and Joomla complicated CMS systems for bigger companies • Magento is an Ecommerce CMS for companies with an IT team • Angular, Angular 2/4, NodeJS, React - these are coding languages for advanced development and customization (I’ve built sites for all of these) Do you think having a personal app for your business is still important. Or is it worth it? (Question by Zachary Bales-Henry) Yes, it can be worth it to create a custom mobile app but it depends on your goals and your budget. Good examples of business apps and goals: • Coldwell Banker Real Estate app (easy to find homes and share them with your realtor) • Starbucks and Caribou for payment and rewards (easier payment and to keep customers engaged..even addicted to gamifying drinking coffee) • Walgreens (prescription management, purchase, renewals) • Amazon purchases (get users to buy more but simplify the web experience for your phone) Thanks for watching! I made the video public so that you can share it with friends. Please leave me a comment, I’d appreciate your feedback or questions.<br />https://youtu.be/iG_AjMLfAKQ Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-27892286103596050092018-01-26T19:17:00.001-06:002018-01-26T19:17:19.893-06:00Technology Q&A for Small Business Owners about Search Engine Optimization (SEO)<div style="width: 480px; height: 270px; overflow: hidden; position: relative;"><iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" seamless="seamless" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitAllowFullScreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" id="okplayer" width="480" height="270" src="http://youtube.com/embed/RKWuPxRtJP8" style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; width: 480px; height: 270px;" name="okplayer"></iframe></div><br />Tech Q&amp;A - Discussion on Search Engine Optimization, especially for WIX users. If you have website questions and like this video please leave me a comment and I'll answer it next Friday at 4PM CST. I am looking to start a conversation via video podcasts to connect my friends and business contacts. The podcast will initially be centered around answering IT questions in my wheelhouse. Topic Ideas: personal branding, building a business online, how to sell things online, social media management, SEO (search engine optimization), websites, BI (business intelligence), AI (artificial intelligence), front-end development, UX (user experience) and machine learning. I’d like to introduce my friends who have small businesses, start the conversation rolling and see where this goes. Discussed this week: · Google Webmaster Tools · Robots.txt · SERPs · Search Engine Optimization (SEO) · WIX is harder than some CMS systems to optimize because you can't use rich snippets and lack of code access (it's drag and drop) · Google Analytics to know your audience, where they are coming from and which pages are not performing well · Google Keyword Planner for keyword research · The keywords you think you want to rank for might not be what your customers are using to search for you and how to do basic keyword research · Keywords must be in content on your website to be useful<br />https://youtu.be/RKWuPxRtJP8 Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-10313813112666428012018-01-26T18:29:00.000-06:002018-01-26T18:50:48.617-06:00Talking about building a small business (VIDEO)<img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5IjJk3mf2_0/WmvMejokdbI/AAAAAAABMQ8/S3Gpq8GPNuwkEVyCHl0zPlrUpwybKALBQCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-01-26%2Bat%2B6.48.22%2BPM.png" data-original-width="1590" data-original-height="896" alt="tech q and a about small businesses online" style="width: 100%; max-width: 100%;"/> <h1>Business IT Q&A</h1><p>I am looking to start a conversation via video podcasts to connect my friends and business contacts. The podcast will initially be centered around answering IT questions in my wheelhouse.</p> <p>Topic Ideas: personal branding, building a business online, how to sell things online, social media management, SEO (search engine optimization), websites, BI (business intelligence), AI (artificial intelligence), front-end development, UX (user experience) and machine learning. I’d like to introduce my friends who have small businesses, start the conversation rolling and see where this goes.</p> <p>Thinking a video once a week (until I start podcasting and more by request) next one at 4PM on Friday. If you have questions, feedback, or topic ideas please leave me a comment!!!</p><a name='more'></a> <h2>Information mentioned in this weeks video:</h2> <h3>Top Website Platforms (question by Zachary Bales-Henry)</h3><ul><li>WordPress is a free CMS (content management system) it’s easy to use and easy to setup just be sure to keep your hosting and platform up to date or pay someone to manage it.</li> <p>It’s PHP based and open source. Lots of free plugins to quickly customize your website but more plugins can slow down your site and cause vulnerabilities. Ecommerce plug-ins for WordPress - Shopify.</p><li>Blogger/Blogspot was created by Google. It’s free to use and very simple. Great for monetizing a blog. A little complicated to customize and a pain to add CSS. No plugin or api integrations. You cannot easily do Ecommerce on blogger. </li><li>Drupal and Joomla complicated CMS systems for bigger companies </li><li>Magento is an Ecommerce CMS for companies with an IT team</li><li>Angular, Angular 2/4, NodeJS, React - these are coding languages for advanced development and customization (I’ve built sites for all of these)</li></ul><p>Do you think having a personal app for your business is still important. Or is it worth it? (Question by Zachary Bales-Henry)</p> <p>Yes, it can be worth it to create a custom mobile app but it depends on your goals and your budget.</p> <h3>Good examples of business apps and goals: </h3><ul><li>Coldwell Banker Real Estate app (easy to find homes and share them with your realtor) </li><li>Starbucks and Caribou for payment and rewards (easier payment and to keep customers engaged..even addicted to gamifying drinking coffee)</li><li>Walgreens (prescription management, purchase, renewals)</li><li>Amazon purchases (get users to buy more but simplify the web experience for your phone)</li></ul><p>Mobile also allows easier logins for users on the phone via biometrics like thumb or face recognition.</p> <h3>Payment systems:</h3><p><a href="http://cash.me/app/MXMGMJN">Cash.me</a> is free between friends! You can even use a credit card for a small fee. Fast safe way to send/receive money. Built by the makers of Square. If you sign up with my referral code you and I receive $5 after you send at least $5 to someone in the first 14 days! Now accepting Bitcoin. My referral code: MXMGMJN download:</p><p><a href="http://cash.me/app/MXMGMJN">cash.me/app/MXMGMJN</a> or search cash.me in the App Store then use the code during sign up. </p><ul><li>Square is the popular small business payment system with the tablet like touch system for receiving receipts and payments. </li><li>PayPal - great for moderation of selling good on sites like Listia or eBay. Only does payment protection for online sales.</li><li>Circle</li><li>Zelle (used by most major banks now for Acheson transfers between friends and is free)</li><li>Amazon</li><li>Google Wallet </li><li>Escrow.com for slowly paying someone and protecting both sides (I’ve used all of these)</li></ul><h3>Find Freelancers online (copywriters, designers, developers, administrative assistants): </h3><ul><li>Freelancers.com</li><li>Scribd</li><li>UpWork</li><li>Fivver </li><li>FancyHands (I’ve used all of these)</li></ul><h2>Local Buy Sell Trade groups (I’m the admin and founder of the ones I’m recommending) </h2><ul><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/johnstoniaswap/">Johnston, Iowa: Buy, Sell, Trade (Des Moines & Surrounding Areas)</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1724856091110327/">Iowa Antiques - Buy, Sell, Trade, Auction</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Central-Iowa-Buy-Sell-Trade-185675848834612/">Central Iowa Buy Sell Trade</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/westdesmoinesbst/">West Des Moines, Iowa Buy, Sell, Trade, Swap</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/167581000507892/">Marion County, Iowa Buy, Sell, Trade, Swap</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/854005538011495/">Iowa E-bike and Cycling - Meetup, Chat, Buy, Sell, Trade</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1047692941932491/">Iowa Remodeling (Buy/Sell & Share Tips/Photos)</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/986996578086321/">Des Moines, Iowa (+Surrounding areas) - Buy, Sell, Trade, Auction</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/1057241594351758/">Iowa Miniature Livestock Farmers</a></li><li><a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/iowahci/">Human Computer Interaction (HCI) + UxD + UI + UX + Technology Innovation</a></li></ul> <h2>What is SEO?</h2><p>It’s the process of making your site organically show up in search engine results for certain terms, phrases, and locations.</p> <h2>How to get started with SEO?</h2><p>Make sure your website has fresh, relevant content. Do a competitor analysis, market research, and keyword research. Integrate analytics. Write a blog and be genuine. The business should reflect you or your team and the culture. Who are you? You don’t have to pretend! Just be you and if you’re not the best writer, hire a copywriter. Keep in mind that eventually your clients will likely meet you and your team, if you’re a small business. So you are the business.</p> <p>Wine Company I mentioned to Tasha Lanz of Tasha's Treats is <a href="https://us.nakedwines.com/invite/desaraev">Naked Wines</a>. If you’re not already a Naked Wines member, here is a code for $100 of wine free! I’ll get $40 for each person who signs up and makes a purchase. <a href="https://us.nakedwines.com/invite/desaraev">https://us.nakedwines.com/invite/desaraev</a></p> <p>Other business owners who joined the conversation: Susan Barnes of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/MYTDOGDOGTRAINING/">MYTDOG, "MY Trained Dog"</a>, Tom Hudson of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/515vapeanddiscgolf/">515 Vape and Disc Golf</a>, Dave Weis, Calvin Lee for Design</p> <ul><li>My YouTube Channel: <a href="http://youtube.com/desaraev6">http://youtube.com/desaraev6</a></li><li>All videos will also be posted at <a href="http://facebook.com/agencycouture">http://facebook.com/agencycouture</a></li></ul><p>Thanks for watching! I made the video public so that you can share it with friends. Please leave me a comment, I’d appreciate your feedback or questions.</p> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iG_AjMLfAKQ" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-66521151658621986562018-01-26T18:15:00.003-06:002018-01-26T18:51:09.898-06:00Tech Q&A About Search Engine Optimization (VIDEO)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EYF-rlm6aQQ/WmvLmEIV8uI/AAAAAAABMQw/c-4x7Uv8Cn4tLQcWi96ZcHfFqnQ5Am_TwCLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2018-01-26%2Bat%2B6.44.23%2BPM.png" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="902" alt="thumbnail technology q and a about SEO search engine optimization" style="max-width: 100%; width: 100%;"/> <span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Tech Q&amp;A - Discussion on Search Engine Optimization, especially for WIX users.&nbsp;</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;" /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><br />If you have website questions and like this video please leave me a comment and I'll answer it next Friday at 4PM CST.<br /><br />I am looking to start a conversation via video podcasts to connect my friends and business contacts. The podcast will initially be centered around answering IT questions in my wheelhouse.<br /><br /><a name='more'></a>Topic Ideas: personal branding, building a business online, how to sell things online, social media management, SEO (search engine optimization), websites, BI (business intelligence), AI (artificial intelligence), front-end development, UX (user experience) and machine learning. I’d like to introduce my friends who have small businesses, start the conversation rolling and see where this goes.<br /><br />Discussed this week:<br /><br />· Google Webmaster Tools<br />· Robots.txt<br />· SERPs<br />· Search Engine Optimization (SEO)<br />· WIX is harder than some CMS systems to optimize because you can't use rich snippets and lack of code access (it's drag and drop)<br />· Google Analytics to know your audience, where they are coming from and which pages are not performing well<br />· Google Keyword Planner for keyword research<br />· The keywords you think you want to rank for might not be what your customers are using to search for you and how to do basic keyword research<br />· Keywords must be in content on your website to be useful.</span> <iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RKWuPxRtJP8" width="560"></iframe></div>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-58521994368844116682017-09-29T12:44:00.000-05:002017-09-29T12:48:47.268-05:00Started a New Blog Called Designerly!<p>Very excited to announce my new blog, <a href="https://medium.com/designerly/ux-matters-6c2f242301ff">Designerly</a>. The content will focus on design methods, process, inspiration, ideas, and industry problems.</p> <p>The first article focuses on why UX Matters, high-level methods, and who is directly affected by UX deliverables.</p><p><a href="https://medium.com/designerly/ux-matters-6c2f242301ff" target="_blank" style="cursor:pointer;"><button class="button center" >Check It Out</button></a></p><BR><BR><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yrYNHS0_F8A/Wc6GN6L3BMI/AAAAAAABKzw/5j7MsXLbVegzvBnLMmIRHxPNgwky5uu3ACLcBGAs/s1600/logo-1.png" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yrYNHS0_F8A/Wc6GN6L3BMI/AAAAAAABKzw/5j7MsXLbVegzvBnLMmIRHxPNgwky5uu3ACLcBGAs/s1600/logo-1.png" data-original-width="600" data-original-height="72" style="max-width:100% !important;"/></a> <p>If you have questions, comments, or content ideas -- please share in the comments!</p>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-72863373790896043622017-05-18T14:11:00.000-05:002017-05-18T14:48:45.899-05:00Think Accessibility: Personalize Your Site to Send the Right Message to Visitors with 5 Easy Tips<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;"><h2><b>57 Million Americans have a disability</b> <span style="font-weight: normal;">(Internet Accessibility, 2017), and 54% of American adults with a disability use the web&nbsp;</span><br />(Pew Internet Project).</h2></blockquote><br /><h1>1. Great Design NEEDS Great Code</h1><p>A great design can make users ooh and ahh, if they can access it. Check out Google Web Standards or W3schools.org for tips on how to write good clean code.</p><a name='more'></a><br /><br /><ul><li>Use labels for input fields</li><li>Clearly mark all required fields and use a label that indicates what labels like images or an asterisk (*) represent</li><li>Use more than just icons, images, colors or symbols to identify ANYTHING - it is absolutely okay to use these assets, just be sure to also integrate alt attributes, descriptions, transcripts, and aria fields</li><li>Integrate title tags</li><li>Use unique and page-relevant <a href="http://www.desaraeveit.com/2017/05/write-search-engine-friendly-meta.html">meta data</a> for each page (title, author, description, keywords)</li><li>Avoid inline javascript and styles</li><li>Test your page without CSS (does it still make sense)?</li><li>Captcha is not accessibility friendly</li><li>Bootstrap (at the time of this post's publishing) is not accessibility friendly out-of-the-box</li><li>Do not replace form labels with placeholder text</li><li>Avoid using WYSIWYG editors if you know HTML/CSS. Editors in most CMS tools and Dreamweaver can add a lot of gunk to the code.</li></ul> <h1>2. Accessibility May Require More than the 508 Basics</h1><p>The Rehabilitation Act was enacted by U.S. Congress in 1973 with a section specifically identifying electronic devices, software, and best practices as an amendment called Section 508. The original section, similar to the current one (in my opinion), was mostly ineffective, overlooked, and overall under-promoted with basic rules and guidelines to provide developers and people creating electronics the information needed to provide people with disabilities a similar experience to those without. The EU and UK have similar laws and guidelines. There are also various web standards managed by various groups like <a href="http://webaim.org/" target="_blank">Web Aim</a> and <a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag" target="_blank">W3C</a>.</p> <p>Section 508 was last updated in 1998, ten years before the first iPhone was released by Steve Jobs (January 2007). So, the laws and requirements required may be considered a little out of date or behind the technological times. That being said, there are many great resources available to teach the basics, and even the basics are often skipped. Skipping the basics hurts the end-user, and leaves many government agencies, schools, and organizations open to expensive law suits.</p> <ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>Skip Navigation </b>allows people using assistive technology, like JAWS, to skip over the navigation section of a site. This is important because many disabled internet users with motor skill impediments only use keyboards to tab through a site (never using a mouse). Blind users may have sites read to them and it would take a long time to navigate if they have to listen to the entire navigation over and over.</li><li><b><a href="http://www.desaraeveit.com/2017/05/tips-to-create-good-alt-attribute-for.html">Alt attributes</a></b> are tags attached to images that describe the image, why it is relevant, and what it means in relation to the page. This text also appears if the image is missing from the file server.&nbsp;</li><li><b>Title tags</b> can be used to describe the anchor text of a link's location and provide additional context so users do not have to navigate to the page.</li><li><b><a href="http://www.desaraeveit.com/2017/05/write-search-engine-friendly-meta.html">Meta data</a></b> is used to describe a page and is also used in the tab of a browser, search engine results, and can be used to propagate sitemaps.</li></ul> <h1>3. Avoid Using Images for Text</h1><p>Web fonts are easy to integrate and custom typography can now be used on the web via CSS. If you don't want to host fonts, consider using <a href="https://fonts.google.com/" target="_blank">Google's free font library</a>. Many designers choose to create print-ready designs and instead of splicing and optimizing images for the web, quickly integrate whole designs via free content management systems like WIX, Wordpress, or Blogger. </p> <p>Beautiful design CAN be accomplished in a responsive (mobile-friendly) way without hosting images as web pages. Plus multiple large images, animations, and designs with fonts inside the image are not readable by search engine bots (the evil little creatures who live inside the interwebs that are responsible for categorizing and managing the library that is search engines).</p> <h1>4. Color with Contrast</h1><p>8.1 Million American's are known to have a vision impairment, many with color blindness. If font colors look similar to the background behind the text, the content may become unreadable. There are many versions of color contrast checkers. Web Aim offers a free tool on their website, and WAVE is a Google Chrome add-on that allows web developers to quickly quality check sites for common accessibility issues.</p><h1>5. Testing Takes Time</h1><p>Know your user, and plan for more users you don't know. User experience research can be fun! User interviews are just the start, but ongoing research using tools like Krux, Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Moz, CrazyEgg, and others can help developers and designers better understand who they are creating for. There are dozens of browsers available, hundreds of versions, and various devices that people may be using to access a web page or application. Analytics can help narrow down the requirements to a specific browser, various devices, versions, and what time of accessibility tools are CURRENTLY being used. A good tool and knowledgeable researcher can even discover which browsers have the highest exit rate (meaning you're losing traffic and should optimize for those users).</p> <p>Over time content can be customized based on demographics, keywords, web morphing, and the use of machine learning to give a dynamic (almost unique) experience to a large number of users.</p><ul><li>Wahlbin, K., &nbsp;Bunge, K., Krause, G., Miller, M., Wahlbin, S. (Accessed May 2017). Interactive Accessibility. Accessibility Statistics. http://www.interactiveaccessibility.com/accessibility-statistics</li><li>Dolson, J. (2009). Practical Ecommerce. Pew Internet Project. (Accessed May 2017) http://www.practicalecommerce.com/Accessibility-How-Many-Disabled-Web-Users-Are-There</li></ul>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-36702079624644644712017-05-16T14:49:00.001-05:002017-05-16T14:49:33.585-05:00Tips to Create a Good Alt Attribute for Website Images<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; padding: 0px;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><b>Tips:</b></div><ul style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><li>Anchor Text (tips: 1) The text should describe the image if the image contains information 2) The text should explain where the link goes if the image is inside an &lt;a&gt; element 3) Use alt="" if the image is only for decoration)</li><li>Alt Attribute is used when an image is not present or for screen readers (for accessibility purposes screen readers, like JAWS, read text on a page to people with sight impediments). The alt attribute can also help with search engine optimization. It is important that this tag describes the image it is attached to.</li><li>As a requirement of HTML standards, every image _must _ have an alt attribute.</li><li>Succinct - less than two sentences</li><li>Do not use "image of" or "graphic of"</li><li>Do not repeat text that is outside of the image, if the image conveys text - this should be included in the alt attribute even if it is longer than two sentences.</li></ul><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;"><b>Resources:</b></div><ul style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><li><a class="external-link" href="http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #663366; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="Follow link">http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/</a></li><li><a class="external-link" href="https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_img_alt.asp" rel="nofollow" style="color: #663366; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="Follow link">https://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_img_alt.asp</a></li><li><a class="external-link" href="http://webaim.org/techniques/images/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #663366; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="Follow link">http://webaim.org/techniques/images/</a></li></ul><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;"><b>Sample Code:</b></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">&lt;a class="logo navbar-btn pull-left" href="/" title="Home"&gt;<br />&lt;img src="/logo.png" alt="Home"&gt;<br />&lt;/a&gt;</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Better:</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">&lt;a class="logo navbar-btn pull-left" href="/" title="Home | Brand Name"&gt;<br />&lt;img src="/logo.png" alt="Brand Name"&gt;<br />&lt;/a&gt;</div></div>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-65493617184222627802017-05-16T12:36:00.005-05:002017-05-16T12:36:55.860-05:00Write a Search Engine Friendly Meta-Description<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; padding: 0px;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />(e.g. listed in browser and on search engines - 160-300 characters)</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">A meta description is approximately 135-300 character snippet that describes the content of a single page of a website or application. It is an HTML tag added in the header of each page and is used by search engines and readers as an excerpt for search results.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Example:</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">&lt;meta name="description" content="The page description is a couple sentences long."/&gt;</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Tips:</div><ul style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><li>Use an "action" voice with a single call to action</li><li>For Products include merchandise information (e.g. Manufacturer, SKU, price)</li><li>Include rich snippets&nbsp;<a class="external-link" href="https://yoast.com/tag/rich-snippets/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #663366; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="Follow link">https://yoast.com/tag/rich-snippets/</a><a class="external-link" href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/mark-up-content" rel="nofollow" style="color: #663366; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="Follow link">https://developers.google.com/search/docs/guides/mark-up-content</a></li><li>If keyword research has been done (for SEO) the main keyword or phrase should be included.</li><li>It should be unique (not repeated on multiple pages)</li></ul></div>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-80186269545664934642017-05-16T12:36:00.001-05:002017-05-16T12:37:06.351-05:00What is a Meta Title? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; padding: 0px;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />(e.g. listed in browser and on search engines)</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">A meta title is used to name a page within a website. It is coded as a meta tag in the head of HTML. The title within search results uses the Meta Title Tag, it is also used as the page tab name in browsers, as the title when shared on social media, and the default bookmark name if a user saves it.</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;"><b>Tips:</b></div><ul style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin: 10px 0px 0px;"><li>If keyword research has been done for the page/site integrate at least one relevant keyword</li><li>Ideally the Title Tag will include ALL keywords the page should rank for</li><li>Write for humans - the title should NOT just be a list of words</li><li>50-60 characters including spaces</li><li>Most important keywords come first</li><li>Do not duplicate</li><li>Accurately describe the page</li><li>The first headline (&lt;h1&gt;) should NOT be the same as the title tag</li><li>Separate ideas, categories, keywords, or even the brand name with pipes (keyword | category | brand)</li></ul><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;"><b>Example:</b></div><div class="code panel" style="background: rgb(245, 245, 245); border-radius: 3px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); color: #333333; font-family: monospace; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.33333; margin: 9px 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="codeContent panelContent" style="margin: 0px; padding: 9px 12px;"><pre class="code-java" style="max-height: 30em; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: normal;">&lt;title&gt;Example Title&lt;/title&gt;<br /></pre></div></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;">Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px;"><span class="image-wrap"><a file-preview-id="87672" file-preview-title="image-2017-05-16-12-26-06-317.png" file-preview-type="image" href="https://jira.meredith.com/secure/attachment/87672/87672_image-2017-05-16-12-26-06-317.png" id="87672_thumb" resolved="" style="color: #663366; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="image-2017-05-16-12-26-06-317.png"><img src="https://jira.meredith.com/secure/thumbnail/87672/_thumb_87672.png" style="border: 0px solid black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></a></span><span class="image-wrap"><a file-preview-id="87672" file-preview-title="image-2017-05-16-12-26-06-317.png" file-preview-type="image" href="https://jira.meredith.com/secure/attachment/87672/87672_image-2017-05-16-12-26-06-317.png" id="87672_thumb" resolved="" style="color: #663366; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="image-2017-05-16-12-26-06-317.png"><img src="https://jira.meredith.com/secure/thumbnail/87672/_thumb_87672.png" style="border: 0px solid black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></a></span><br /><span class="image-wrap"><a file-preview-id="87670" file-preview-title="image-2017-05-16-12-26-35-699.png" file-preview-type="image" href="https://jira.meredith.com/secure/attachment/87670/87670_image-2017-05-16-12-26-35-699.png" id="87670_thumb" resolved="" style="color: #663366; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="image-2017-05-16-12-26-35-699.png"><img src="https://jira.meredith.com/secure/thumbnail/87670/_thumb_87670.png" style="border: 0px solid black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></a></span><span class="image-wrap"><a file-preview-id="87670" file-preview-title="image-2017-05-16-12-26-35-699.png" file-preview-type="image" href="https://jira.meredith.com/secure/attachment/87670/87670_image-2017-05-16-12-26-35-699.png" id="87670_thumb" resolved="" style="color: #663366; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" title="image-2017-05-16-12-26-35-699.png"><img src="https://jira.meredith.com/secure/thumbnail/87670/_thumb_87670.png" style="border: 0px solid black; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></a></span></div></div>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-69734855040616091902017-02-23T11:23:00.003-06:002017-02-23T11:23:52.195-06:00Duolingo Group Project<img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DZeVp8IlcpQ/WK8agbZTZII/AAAAAAABDsQ/pFr-oAPq9hE5G97ERrYa8GLVotn2vYf9ACLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-02-23%2Bat%2B11.23.36%2BAM.png" style="width: 100%;"/><div class="clearfix"></div><p>Young Ju Cho wrote a nice blog post about our group research project.</p> <p><a href="http://youngju-cho.squarespace.com/new-blog/2016/5/7/usability-testing-duolingo">http://youngju-cho.squarespace.com/new-blog/2016/5/7/usability-testing-duolingo</a></p>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-24104041193642509102017-02-23T11:21:00.000-06:002017-02-23T11:21:31.196-06:00Found These Old Newspaper Articles<img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tdov3OrN2fI/WK8Z-AlnAGI/AAAAAAABDsM/D3-uKEm1478oKqogacl_h9n-oZnodZR7gCLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2017-02-23%2Bat%2B11.21.24%2BAM.png" class="left"/><h2>I was in the news...</h2> <ul><li>https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/128265356/</li><li>https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/128264902/</li></ul> <p>"...Des Moines and Desarae Veit, 14, of Dexter have been selected as finalists in the Miss Iowa American Coed Pageant..."</p>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-5433703431013762092016-12-28T10:21:00.000-06:002016-12-28T10:21:33.965-06:00Feedback/Ideas for Audible.com and Audible Applications<h1>Recommendations for Audible</h1> <p>I wish that I could provide feedback directly from the iPhone or Android app. I wish that if the application crashed it would save which items have been read or marked as finished. </p><p>In the list of books it would be nice to see how many stars each book has been rated and to be able to sort them by rating (IN APP). </p><p>I would like to be able to login to the app with biometrics (thumbprint). The android app integrates the store better than the iphone app. </p><p>When rating books, there are too many clicks required. Seems like the multiple stars could all just be on the initial screen (with the list of recommended books) rather than clicking overall stars, being redirected, then submitting and going back. When doing this to multiple books it becomes very tedious. </p><p>It would be nice to integrate the Listener page better with other book lover's social media like Shelfari and GoodReads or even blogs so that feedback can be auto posted to Amazon, Shelfari, GoodReads, and Blogs. </p><p>Why haven't improvements been made to the gamification of the Audible application? I earned most of the badges a few years ago, but no new badges ever appear or rewards for earning them, or the ability to compete with friends. Most of the application seems to just revolve around the antiquated "share feature" which in its default form is annoying and spammy. I read a lot of books and if I shared every book, every badge, and every other thing from the application with the default verbiage... it would annoy my friends. There seems to be little motivation to this, but if people could earn points or rewards for commenting, inviting friends, sharing books, and writing reviews - more people might be involved. It could track the number of people invited, make a competition out of books read, or for every 100 books offer 1 free credit. </p><p>The tracking for the number of titles in my library seems to always be off. It would be awesome if books returned would show up somewhere. I'm not sure if I would accidentally repurchase a book I didn't like, but at least I could see the books I rated poorly and the "similar" books recommended. </p>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-29498402702537633862016-11-15T17:42:00.000-06:002016-11-15T17:42:07.407-06:00Design & Laws for Usable Systems<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pJfu5vvBCx4/V8YLlDVfUwI/AAAAAAABBeg/7e1ah7ADCH0VrDIqHo88ABBF5xShforEACLcB/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pJfu5vvBCx4/V8YLlDVfUwI/AAAAAAABBeg/7e1ah7ADCH0VrDIqHo88ABBF5xShforEACLcB/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div><div><span style="color: #111111; font-family: Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></span></div><ul style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #111111; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style-position: outside; list-style-type: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.5in; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Dix, Finlay,&nbsp;<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Aboud</span>&nbsp;&amp; Beale (2003): Introduction to&nbsp;“Human-Computer Interaction.”</li></ul></div>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-86222863569308743052016-11-01T15:44:00.000-05:002016-11-01T15:44:02.158-05:00Consider Good Human Factors<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px;">“If consideration for good human factors is given early in the design process, considerable savings in both money and possibly human suffering can be achieved.” -- Wickens, Lee, Liu &amp; Gordon-Becker: Chapter 1 of “Introduction to Human Factors Engineering.”</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">“The system must support the user’s task: if the system forces the user to adopt an unacceptable mode of work then it is not usable.” -- Dix, Finlay, Aboud &amp; Beale (2003): Introduction to “Human-Computer Interaction.”</div><div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">"In&nbsp;<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-family: inherit;">other words, companies would be wise to invest early and often in a well-thought user experience for their products and services. Too many companies believe that their brand recognition will suffice when launching and maintain products. This is just not the case anymore in our day and age. A successful company will invest time into testing the usability of their products to ensure they aren’t wasting time and money focusing in the wrong areas." -- Ryan Stone</span></div></div>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-60234900830903595902016-10-24T13:48:00.000-05:002016-10-24T13:48:00.207-05:00Good Vs. Bad Product Design.Charles Di Renzo Week 2 Reading Reactions COLLAPSE I liked the Wickens reading the most out of these 3. It covered the different types of experiments and under which conditions to use them. This was very fascinating to me as I love the science involved with HCI. I spoke about it in my last post, but I’m always thinking about whether or not a product can be ‘objectively good’ and if so will that mean the most products are headed down a road to imitate one another in the hopes of the being the best product on the market? I think we all feel that products can be ‘objectively bad’ because there are products that are either hard to use or they don’t accomplish their purpose very well, but can a product be deemed ‘objectively good’ if there are people who would prefer a different interface? Either way I enjoy hearing about the science and research that goes into everything. I was also glad to see the discussion of P and t values and their importance in research, as it was a really interesting part of my economics major to see how studies were conducted. I hope that my previous experience with statistics will come in use during this graduate program. I also enjoyed the Dix Ch. 9 article and how they discussed the Heuristic evaluation, we had touched on these in my undergraduate ‘Usability’ class and I enjoy using an app or a webpage and thinking about how they’ve been applied. Charles, I like that you pointed out Wicken's experiment types and the objectively good/bad products. I didn't really consider discussing either of these in my response to this weeks reading, but the way you responded reminds me a lot of other readings and lectures I've been to on how products are invented or revolutionized. Too often, it seems products are given "extra features" for the sake of doing something meaninglessly different that distract from products, but sometimes they are done poorly. I own the Samsung S2 Smart Watch. I like it a lot. It functions well as a phone and a watch, but beyond that it holds little value for me. It COULD do so much more (I'm trying to learn to build my own apps for it). I was also extremely disappointed that the SmartThings app is not in products yet for the S2 (which it was deceivingly advertised and is also owned by Samsung). Mechanical keyboards now come with distracting, but very cool lights. Makes a great expensive techy purchase, but I also wonder at the necessity (though maybe I'm a hypocrite as I type on a mechanical keyboard at work.. but I don't think it's really that much better than my built in laptop one). Shoes can track your steps, but do little more than that. The sensors is inconveniently on the bottom of your dirty shoes. It is dependent on a phone. Smart home devices are extremely expensive, for what they are and how poorly they are built. Many of the devices are built for battery installation so you do not have to wire them into a wall, but there are rarely other options to do this without the battery. Why don't they come with rechargeable batteries or solar panels? It just seems all too often, things are designed because they are cool new ideas without trying to solve problems or ask the question is there anything wrong with the current design? How could this be better? OR they do ask the questions and do not try to encourage REAL conversation or negative feedback. Growth in HCI often comes the most from negative feedback, not feel good answers. I really like the idea of doing a pilot study before the real study. This makes a lot of sense as a test run, but ideally in software development, I like doing multiple evaluations and tests. The process becomes very cyclical: build, test, revise, repeat. The problem with this is the software is only "new" once. Finding lots of users who are unfamiliar with the system can be hard for me since I work in an industry where everything is secured or confidential. Something else I wondered about the multitasking study was if the users had high familiarity with the types of tasks, perhaps the task itself was hard for them? In which case, does that reflect on their multitasking abilities? I would probably consider myself a HMM or high media multitasker vs. light media multitasker (LMM). I wonder if the results from the study or takeaway could be used to identify self-deficiencies in this area for improvement and what multiple follow-ups to the test would produce. I doubt that picking out red or blue rectangles would be hard, but you never know. Perhaps the task was distracting in itself because it was boring? I wonder if motivational factors should also be considered. Since the HMM and LMM are also self-identifying, wouldn't it be best to have a survey or tasks that also confirm their assumptions? Like, what makes you a multitasker? Do you frequently have multiple tabs open at the same time? Does it bother you to have music or a TV on while you are doing something else like work or homework? Do you perform well in high stress or high anxiety situations? Do you like to work ahead? Maybe also define for them, better, what that means? Lab tests are never going to be just like real life. They are unfamiliar spaces for the participants and people are aware they are being watched in a way that is hard to forget. So, another question I have is how different this would be if it was made it to some kind of similar test or even a video game. That way it could be tested on a larger audience without the nuances of lab testing. (Wickens, 2008) does discuss that there are varying methods to testing that involve less controlled and more realistic observation. I would like to see how some of these tests could be conducted using mixed methods. How they are setup, analysis is done, synthesis, and learn more about the backgrounds of individual researchers.Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-83627193783129543902016-10-03T11:59:00.000-05:002016-10-03T11:59:02.050-05:00Connecting humans to computers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRow db-message" id="layer_35" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; color: #111111; cursor: pointer; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; padding-bottom: 3px;" title="Collapse Post"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCell" id="layer_35_dv_rc1" style="clear: both; width: 987px;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem author" id="layer_35_dv_pu" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 6px; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="profileCardAvatarThumb" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.08px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;">Lydia Hardie&nbsp;</span></span><span class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem attachment" id="layer_35_dv_af" style="border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 18px;"></span></div></div><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCell" id="layer_35_dv_rc2" style="clear: both; width: 987px;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem message-subject" id="layer_35_dv_ph" style="font-size: 14.08px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; white-space: nowrap;"><span id="subject__2119797_1" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.08px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Week 1 Definitions</span></div></div><div class="db-collapse-control" id="collExpMsgDiv__2119797_1" style="background: url(&quot;images/jagged.png&quot;) center center repeat-x transparent; height: 12px; margin: 0px auto; opacity: 1 !important; text-align: center; transition: opacity 0.5s ease-in-out; width: 592.188px;"></div></div><div class="dbThreadMessage" id="message__2119797_1" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; color: #111111; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><form action="https://bb.its.iastate.edu/message" id="messageFrameForm" method="post" name="messageForm" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="dbThread" style="background: transparent; border-radius: 3px; border: 0px; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="dbThreadInfo clearfix" style="color: #555555; float: right;"> <dl style="border: 0px; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.16px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"></dl></div><div class="dbThreadBody" style="clear: both; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.6em;" tabindex="0"><div class="vtbegenerated" style="background: transparent !important; font-size: small; margin: 0px !important; overflow-x: auto; padding: 0px !important;"><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">As someone coming in with more of a psychology background than anything, I found room for elaboration in the definition of a computer provided by Dix.&nbsp; It states “By computer we mean any technology ranging from the general desktop computer to a large-scale computer system, a process control system or an embedded system.”&nbsp; <br /><a name='more'></a>I think much of the lack of clarity comes from the use of the word in its definition.&nbsp; I guess, I was largely looking to this reading as a guide to what qualified as human-computer interaction, especially in light of brainstorming topics for the research project. The opening example of this article in which the delete button is pressed instead of the save button seems as though it could be quite analogous to poor button layout design on a simple calculator, but I do not think that the simple calculator qualifies as a computer.&nbsp; Likewise, the automatic syringe example seems very similar, but again this is not a computer as I know it.&nbsp; Furthermore, the example research project regarding prosthetics also does not appear to include a computer, or at least one that meets my current understanding.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; On the other hand, I find that Reisberg simply and adequately defines cognitive psychology “as the scientific study of knowledge,” and sufficiently elaborates on what this encompasses.&nbsp; I do realize that with my background of psychology, my requirements for a definition are less for cognitive psychology, though.&nbsp; Lastly, in a bit of irony, I was amused that Reisberg’s use of the computer as a metaphor for psychological explanation perhaps provided the best attempt of a definition for a computer as information storage and retrieval were emphasized.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Lydia,</div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">I agree with your summation of the lack of computer-based examples in the reading, at least computers in a software development sense: that include a monitor, hard drive,&nbsp;keyboard, and a mouse - heck even more tablet or phone interface examples would have been nice. I did enjoy the readings as starters for understanding psychology, how humans interact with machines, and the underlying basic principals of psychology. I guess I've never really just thought of cognitive psychology as "the scientific study of knowledge" but I'm sure that is true. I do not have an extensive psychology background. I know it relates to perception, learning, experience, and obviously knowledge but for some reason have always considered it more like a path within the mind and how things are processed. Like a railway connecting to various stations. The rail line being just as important as the cargo, destination, or train. Maybe my love for hyperbole and parables is why I enjoyed the reading from Daniel&nbsp;<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.6px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Resiber</span>&nbsp;so much. He used analogies to describe abstract ideals and draw conclusions while posing additional questions like why do we do what we do and how?</div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Desarae</div></div></div></div></form></div></div>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-40207197778965978282016-09-26T14:01:00.000-05:002016-09-26T14:01:01.869-05:00Considerations with Multitasking Katherine Anthony Reading Reaction, Week 2 - through the eyes of a journalist COLLAPSE I found the “Cognitive control in media multitaskers” reading to be extremely interesting – especially because my area of emphasis is in journalism. We have frequent discussions about the evolution of multitasking in media and the impact that has on attention span. From a content perspective, we write to appeal to an audience that has a short attention span and who is likely preoccupied and just wants the down and dirty facts. That’s where the inverted pyramid comes into play – most important details at the top and information becomes less important further down the piece. <a name='more'></a> That being said, the results are quite startling to me. While I think it makes sense to say that HMMs struggle to filter irrelevance, I don’t know that the distractions that they may encounter ignore the LMMs altogether. It certainly shows that it’s an easy distraction for HMMs but depending on what that distraction is, LMMs could be just as susceptible. In my opinion, the way that media is approached – at least “text” media – both print and online – the audience that is being catered to is actually the LMMs and not the HMMs since it is the LMMs who have the ability for top-down attention. With the evolution and availability of different media platforms (cell phones, tablets, PCs, laptops, Smart TVs) since 2009, I wonder if these results would be the same today. The reason I’m curious about this is because, especially during population sport seasons, PIP (picture-in-picture) is heavily used to watch multiple games at the same time. However, you don’t often hear or see that the person consuming all of that media cannot differentiate between what is and is not relevant – aka what game had a significant moment over the others. In support of the situation I just mentioned, The Verge recently did a follow-up to the NBC Olympic coverage (or lack thereof when it came to quality coverage) and they criticize their lack of PIP options for watching multiple events at once. That article can be found here: http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/26/12646224/nbc-rio-olympics-2016-coverage-tv-ratings-streaming Do you think that enough has changed in the last 7-ish years to repeat this study and compare for the change (if there is any and exploring why/why not)? John Culliton RE: Reading Reaction, Week 2 - through the eyes of a journalist COLLAPSE Hi Katie, Great article. I had never really considered the PiP option as a way to parallel the study until you mentioned it, but it makes sense. As you say, most people wouldn't have a major issue remembering what event happened at what game. I wonder if the ability to utilize multiple media platforms without distraction could be impacted by "what" those platforms are providing. For instance, in PiP you may be watching multiple sporting events, which relate quite well. However, if the different platforms are providing a spread of unrelated information, such as Facebook photos, CNN news articles, and ESPN on in the background, which are unrelated topics, would the effects be the same? Thanks for the response. Jack- Shelby Gosa RE: Reading Reaction, Week 2 - through the eyes of a journalist COLLAPSE To expand on what you suggested, John, I would also wonder if the type of media has an effect? For instance, radio is audio only. Information coming from places like Twitter and Facebook is text or reading only, the nightly news can be both audio and sight, etc. Some people are perfectly comfortable listening to the news on the radio while also reading articles online. Is there a difference in audio vs. sight related media? It would of course be difficult to listen to multiple audio things at once, but I would be interested in finding out what is more/less distracting, multiple media feeds with or without audio? Can you balance audio+visual feeds in the same way as you do multiple visual feeds? Is the level of distractedness different, or do audio feeds more or less equal visual feeds? I feel as though the audio may have a significant effect, though one would have to take into consideration the tendency of the users to "tune out" things that they don't want to hear. Desarae Veit RE: Reading Reaction, Week 2 - through the eyes of a journalist COLLAPSE Shelby, I like that you brought up the correlation between types of media and whether or not they are distracting. I'm sure it is very much dependent on individuals, but I would like to use my coworker and myself as an example. I have been doing UI/UX for over a decade and often like to listen to audio books while I work. I retain the information fine and even write book reviews on a blog, in my free time. I can only listen to the books when I code. It's a lot the tunnel vision. If I'm in the groove I can complete a whole website, after the strategy is in place, without thinking too much about it. I can not do this while doing other tasks, like writing a paper. My coworker likes to "multitask" with tabs but could never have other auditory distractions. --Desarae Katherine Anthony RE: Reading Reaction, Week 2 - through the eyes of a journalist COLLAPSE Jack, That's a really interesting question! Perhaps it's an unexplored element of HMMs/LMMs in assuming that what they would be watching would be related (definitely what I did!). I don't know that I've ever considered using PiP for multiple focuses - typically it's all sports or all news - I hadn't even thought to stream news while watching sports or vise-versa. But, to argue with myself, would it be considered low or high multitasking if you're using PiP? Would someone be considered a LMM if they're watching all one "subject" and a HGG if they're watching different "subjects"? PiP isn't extremely new, though it's rarely discussed unless it's in criticizing something or someone -- so while I thought the study that we read could have been viewed as outdated, I think it's safe to say that it's safe to say that it absolutely is outdated because of all of these new availabilities. Absolutely fascinating to think about. Thanks for bringing that up! Desarae Veit RE: Reading Reaction, Week 2 - through the eyes of a journalist COLLAPSE Katherine, I did not consider the age of this study. Bravo to you for pointing that out. Considering smart phones and advancements in gaming, computers, and television- I would absolutely say this study could use an update. Who knows, maybe the data would be the same but I see a few factors in the original study that also gave me pause to question the data's accuracy (discussed in my response). When I was growing up the internet was dialup (you remember the AOL discs?). It took minutes, sometimes well over 10 for one page to load. Now, we get mad or leave if a page takes more than .3 milliseconds to load (I read that in a study once but websitemagazine.com says 2-3 seconds). The same original study also discussed that most users only give pages 2-3 seconds to determine if it was relevant before deciding to leave or engage with the site further. My experience as a designer and someone who loves reviewing website analytics would correlate with that information, since my bounce rates seem to occur high and quickly on landing pages or almost not at all. Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-34738615493930018612016-09-26T11:58:00.000-05:002016-09-26T11:58:01.626-05:00Poetry is said to make the mysterious familiar and the familiar mysterious.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRow db-message" id="layer_8" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; color: #111111; cursor: pointer; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; padding-bottom: 3px;" title="Collapse Post"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCell" id="layer_8_dv_rc1" style="clear: both; width: 987px;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem author" id="layer_8_dv_pu" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 6px; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="profileCardAvatarThumb" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.08px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;">Mahmood Ramezani&nbsp;</span></span><span class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem attachment" id="layer_8_dv_af" style="border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 18px;"></span></div></div><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCell" id="layer_8_dv_rc2" style="clear: both; width: 987px;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem message-subject" id="layer_8_dv_ph" style="font-size: 14.08px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; white-space: nowrap;"><span id="subject__2113515_1" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.08px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Summary and reaction!</span></div></div><div class="db-collapse-control" id="collExpMsgDiv__2113515_1" style="background: url(&quot;images/jagged.png&quot;) center center repeat-x transparent; height: 12px; margin: 0px auto; opacity: 1 !important; text-align: center; transition: opacity 0.5s ease-in-out; width: 592.188px;"><a href="https://bb.its.iastate.edu/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&amp;forum_id=_235964_1&amp;nav=discussion_board_entry&amp;conf_id=_159775_1&amp;course_id=_54913_1&amp;message_id=_2113515_1#" id="collExpMsg__2113515_1" role="button" style="background: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-bottom-color: rgb(42, 142, 193); border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-family: inherit; font-size: 10px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 1px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 9px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase;">COLLAPSE</a></div></div><div class="dbThreadMessage" id="message__2113515_1" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; color: #111111; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><form action="https://bb.its.iastate.edu/message" id="messageFrameForm" method="post" name="messageForm" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="dbThread" style="background: transparent; border-radius: 3px; border: 0px; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="dbThreadInfo clearfix" style="color: #555555; float: right;"> <dl style="border: 0px; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.16px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"></dl></div><div class="dbThreadBody" style="clear: both; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.6em;" tabindex="0"><div class="vtbegenerated" style="background: transparent !important; font-size: small; margin: 0px !important; overflow-x: auto; padding: 0px !important;"><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Cognition – exploring the science of the mind</span></b></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The author believes that we need a lot of background knowledge for understanding even a simple short story. Indeed cognition is really complicated, even it doesn't seem so. Also he categorizes our knowledge into&nbsp;<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">generic</span></strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">episodic</span></strong>. He also shows how vital memory is in our daily life and "without a memory, there is no self", he states.</span></div> <a name='more'></a><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Then he provides some history of the cognitive psychology. He defines Introspection (a disappointing approach to the cognitive science) and Behaviorism as trials for understanding how brain works.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The interesting part is that psychologists have started to model the human brain based on the computers and the way they work. They then reached a model of “Working-memory” which explains many attitudes that we have when using our brain. Lastly, he states that some believe that human intelligence in many domains is nothing but excess capacity in working memory which indicates the importance of that.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The model of the “Working Memory” reminds me of the CPU (Central Processing Unit) which has caches for calculations. Caches are superfast and super expensive memories that are used by the cores to give them the same support as working memory in brain.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The point is that I believe we have explained the way brain works according to our knowledge on computers, but at some extend we might be wrong. As the Newton’s laws cannot explain the quantum physics, this model also might not be able to explain all our abilities and the way brain works.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">An Introduction to Human Factors Engineering</span></b></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">This book starts with some episodes to show how crucial is the way we interact with systems. Then the author defines usability with productivity and error reduction. Then he explains how we can improve user experience through five different ways. Then we can see the domain of the human factors and how vast and broad this subject is.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">As far as I see, the human factors along with cognitive psychology play an important role in HCI, because we already know a lot about computers and systems because we have invented them. But we need to know more about humans in order to improve the interaction between these two. Knowing human capabilities and limits can help us a lot in HCI, especially in designing user interfaces.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Dix Chapter 1</span></b></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">This book has really good definitions of three major parts in HCI: Human (user), Computer and the Interaction and the HCI in general as well.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">I think this one was a must-read for me and anyone how wants to know what HCI is. It really helps to get familiar with HCI.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><b><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">CHI</span></b></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">I think the topics are well organized, however, some topics are extremely narrow (like “papers on how fast you type on your phone”), meanwhile some other are really broad, e.g. “Child computer interaction”. I think the latter for example, could have been divided to some narrower categories. But the whole categorizing seems so good and understandable.</span></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.6px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Mahmood</span>,</div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Did you enjoy these readings? At least for the first your response seemed, understandably, a bit skeptical. I really enjoyed the comparison of cognitive psychology to the mysteriousness of poetry. The mind is definitely fascinating and mysterious, at least to me. Observations and theories may be considered fact by some, but unlike mathematical&nbsp;sciences most human sciences do not have the same feeling of hard logical proof. Ideas, emotions, color, performance, memory, and interactions are very abstract and like beauty open to interpretation. It is easy to say that one idea or method "works" to solve a problem or describe multiple people so it should "always work" but that is narrow and faulty.&nbsp;</div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">I like that you took the time to analyze each of the readings and bring in your own perspective. Thank you for sharing.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; font-family: &quot;verdana&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 9pt; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;" /></span></div><blockquote style="background-color: white; border: 0px; margin: 1em 35px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; quotes: &quot;&quot; &quot;&quot;;"><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: small; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">"<em style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Poetry is said to make the mysterious familiar and the familiar mysterious.</em>" --Cognition, Exploring the Science of the Mind, Daniel&nbsp;<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Reisber</span></span>, Reed College</span></div></blockquote></div></div></div></form></div></div>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-73731357178569636662016-09-14T11:55:00.000-05:002016-09-14T11:55:02.782-05:00Rehearsal Loop and an Example of the Usability Testing Process<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRow db-message" id="layer_38" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; color: #111111; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; padding-bottom: 3px;" title="Collapse Post"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCell" id="layer_38_dv_rc1" style="clear: both; width: 987px;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem author" id="layer_38_dv_pu" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 6px; white-space: nowrap;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRow db-message" id="layer_37" style="font-size: 12.8px; padding-bottom: 3px; white-space: normal;" title="Collapse Post"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCell" id="layer_37_dv_rc1" style="clear: both; width: 987px;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem author" id="layer_37_dv_pu" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 6px; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="profileCardAvatarThumb" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.08px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;">Shelby Gosa&nbsp;</span></span><span class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem attachment" id="layer_37_dv_af" style="border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 18px;"></span></div></div><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCell" id="layer_37_dv_rc2" style="clear: both; width: 987px;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem message-subject" id="layer_37_dv_ph" style="font-size: 14.08px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; white-space: nowrap;"><span id="subject__2120229_1" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.08px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Week 1 Reading Reaction</span></div></div><div class="db-collapse-control" id="collExpMsgDiv__2120229_1" style="background: url(&quot;images/jagged.png&quot;) center center repeat-x transparent; height: 12px; margin: 0px auto; opacity: 0; text-align: center; transition: opacity 0.5s ease-in-out; width: 592.188px;"><a href="https://bb.its.iastate.edu/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&amp;forum_id=_235964_1&amp;nav=discussion_board_entry&amp;conf_id=_159775_1&amp;course_id=_54913_1&amp;message_id=_2120229_1#" id="collExpMsg__2120229_1" role="button" style="background: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-bottom-color: rgb(42, 142, 193); border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-family: inherit; font-size: 10px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 1px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 9px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase;">COLLAPSE</a></div></div><div class="dbThreadMessage" id="message__2120229_1" style="font-size: 12.8px; white-space: normal;"><form action="https://bb.its.iastate.edu/message" id="messageFrameForm" method="post" name="messageForm" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="dbThread" style="background: transparent; border-radius: 3px; border: 0px; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="dbThreadInfo clearfix" style="color: #555555; float: right;"> <dl style="border: 0px; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.16px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"></dl></div><div class="dbThreadBody" style="clear: both; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.6em;" tabindex="0"><div class="vtbegenerated" style="background: transparent !important; font-size: small; margin: 0px !important; overflow-x: auto; padding: 0px !important;"><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">From reading the week 1 articles, it is clear to me that I did not understand the cognitive psychology aspect of HCI.&nbsp;There is so much more to product design than I ever thought possible.&nbsp;One aspect that I noted was the article discussing the impact that accidents and mishaps have on companies.&nbsp;I did not foresee such a large monetary impact on a company that was unrelated to lawsuits, but after reading it, it makes sense that things would need to be drastically changed to prevent such issues from happening again. I never imagined those changes costing a company so much money. Through this, I have gained a new appreciation for the necessity of human factor reviewing and trying to prevent operator error. I will also be able to better appreciate these things in my own element of biology.</div> <a name='more'></a><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">I was personally hoping that the articles would give more examples of the cognitive aspects of HCI. I did appreciate the review of types of memory, and learned more about the rehearsal loop in detail. However, some of the things that the articles went over seemed to border on common sense, at least for me. I would love more concrete examples of HCI at work; for example: this group of people made a website that was difficult to navigate, so this is how they fixed it after observing others use it.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRow db-message" id="layer_37_0" style="background-color: white; cursor: pointer; font-size: 12.8px; padding-bottom: 3px;" title="Collapse Post"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCell" id="layer_37_0_dv_rc2" style="clear: both; width: 987px;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem message-subject" id="layer_37_0_dv_ph" style="font-size: 14.08px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; white-space: nowrap;"><span id="subject__2121171_1" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.08px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">RE: Week 1 Reading Reaction</span></div></div><div class="db-collapse-control" id="collExpMsgDiv__2121171_1" style="background: url(&quot;images/jagged.png&quot;) center center repeat-x transparent; height: 12px; margin: 0px auto; opacity: 1 !important; text-align: center; transition: opacity 0.5s ease-in-out; width: 592.188px;"><br /></div></div><div class="dbThreadMessage" id="message__2121171_1" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.8px;"><div class="dbThread" style="background: transparent; border-radius: 3px; border: 0px; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="dbThreadInfo clearfix" style="color: #555555; float: right;"> <dl style="border: 0px; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.16px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"></dl></div><div class="dbThreadBody" style="clear: both; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.6em;" tabindex="0"><div class="vtbegenerated" style="background: transparent !important; font-size: small; margin: 0px !important; overflow-x: auto; padding: 0px !important;"><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Hi Shelby,</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Based on your reading, especially the rehearsal loop,&nbsp;what about the articles was obvious to you?&nbsp;Did anything pop-out to you as applicable to your area of interest or research?&nbsp;I too,&nbsp;would love more concrete or application examples but perhaps these discussions could also help start those discussions and how other people in class have or will apply these theories, methodologies, and examples to their own projects.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">I would like to start by providing an example of how I usually describe a dumbed down version of the UX process in relationship to software development usability testing. Imagine you are the UX designer/researcher and the user interface designer has already developed a web form. The web form consists of a simple page with a few fields, a submit button, and a success page. Users in the test group are asked to complete the form and the UX researcher, you, then compares their progress with a baseline they set by completing the form yourself. The fields on the form might include things like name, email address, and a phone number. So, you estimate it takes you approximately 2 minutes to complete the form, but you helped create it so you give a 3 minute leeway&nbsp;because of your experience with the form. You want everyone to make it to the success page, in under five minutes, without errors. A number of things might happen with this form, perhaps the users are taking longer than expected, maybe they are getting errors, or maybe they never even complete the form. Your job is to use analytics and other tools available to determine why things are not happening as expecting, to improve the process, and try to make this form and process get completed as efficiently as possible. A few obvious things may come to mind, so you review the form. Maybe it needs labels, browser testing, perhaps there are form field requirements that should be described in a description under the labels or in a tool tip. An example of that would be if you do not allow certain types of email addresses or if the phone number field has to have dashes. This may be a point where you discuss with the development team if dashes are necessary&nbsp;because they could be added on the back-end automatically. You may also consider in-line validation, but for accessibility reasons you would also need a back up method for delivering error messages. I prefer a list at the top of the page that is bulleted and links to each error. The goal here would be to not only determine the errors but try to prevent any bottlenecks from ever occurring. Now, imagine all of those things are fixed but there is still a number of people not completing the form or taking longer than usual. This could be due to external factors such as a home/work distraction. In that case you may want to check if they went to help documentation on the site or tried searching for another way to finish the form. You could track a heat map or where their mouse goes. You might also consider using behavioral flows or looking up their on-site search results. Regardless, it should be assumed that at least a couple people on public sites may have unfamiliarity with the application, technology in general, or may simply have computer issues or other external factors. If it is a corporate application, some of those things may be ruled out. In which case, it may be good to do observational testing where you assign tasks to users and in-person watch them complete the form to determine additional issues impeding the success of your criteria.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.6px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Desarae</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></form></div></div></div></div></div>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3901891382615045850.post-29652382194896048662016-09-12T11:52:00.000-05:002016-09-12T11:52:08.699-05:00The Software Development Tripod of Successful Team Work<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRow db-message" id="layer_41" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; color: #111111; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px; padding-bottom: 3px;" title="Collapse Post"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCell" id="layer_41_dv_rc1" style="clear: both; width: 987px;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem author" id="layer_41_dv_pu" style="float: left; margin-bottom: 6px; white-space: nowrap;"><span class="" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="profileCardAvatarThumb" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.08px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative;">Claire Davison&nbsp;</span></span><span class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem attachment" id="layer_41_dv_af" style="border: 0px; display: inline-block; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px; vertical-align: middle; width: 18px;"></span></div></div><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCell" id="layer_41_dv_rc2" style="clear: both; width: 987px;"><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRowCellItem message-subject" id="layer_41_dv_ph" style="font-size: 14.08px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; white-space: nowrap;"><span id="subject__2120989_1" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 14.08px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Week 1 Readings</span></div></div><div class="db-collapse-control" id="collExpMsgDiv__2120989_1" style="background: url(&quot;images/jagged.png&quot;) center center repeat-x transparent; height: 12px; margin: 0px auto; opacity: 0; text-align: center; transition: opacity 0.5s ease-in-out; width: 592.188px;"><a href="https://bb.its.iastate.edu/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&amp;forum_id=_235964_1&amp;nav=discussion_board_entry&amp;conf_id=_159775_1&amp;course_id=_54913_1&amp;message_id=_2120989_1#" id="collExpMsg__2120989_1" role="button" style="background: rgb(232, 232, 232); border-bottom-color: rgb(42, 142, 193); border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-family: inherit; font-size: 10px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 1px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 9px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase;">COLLAPSE</a></div></div><div class="dbThreadMessage" id="message__2120989_1" style="background-color: #e6e6e6; color: #111111; font-family: &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><form action="https://bb.its.iastate.edu/message" id="messageFrameForm" method="post" name="messageForm" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.8px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="dbThread" style="background: transparent; border-radius: 3px; border: 0px; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="dbThreadInfo clearfix" style="color: #555555; float: right;"> <dl style="border: 0px; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.16px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"></dl></div><div class="dbThreadBody" style="clear: both; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.6em;" tabindex="0"><div class="vtbegenerated" style="background: transparent !important; font-size: small; margin: 0px !important; overflow-x: auto; padding: 0px !important;"><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Dix, Finlay, Aboud &amp; Beale’s Introduction to Human Computer interaction begins by discussing what make a usable design. The components that are presented as necessary to make a computer system usable are aligned with Neilson’s Heuristics, which have been presented in other ISU HCI classes and are commonly used as a guideline for a user interface heuristic evaluation. While the chapter does state that HCI is an inter-disciplinary field, it puts a heavy emphasis on computer science. This idea has shown up in other readings and mentioned in discussions before but through experience, research and presentations from experts in the field; I believe otherwise. The authors do identify themselves as computer scientists and acknowledge that their view is not shared by everyone in the field; but I believe an HCI team with members who felt that one discipline was more important than the other would suffer compared to a team who believed each psychology, design, and computer science or engineering were equal “legs” in a tripod.</div> <a name='more'></a><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The chapter, “The Science of the Mind” feeds into an ongoing fascination I have with learning about and understanding how people think, learn, and make decisions.&nbsp; In my experience as a kindergarten teacher, I have participated in the building of generic knowledge through guided development of episodic knowledge. When children first begin school in kindergarten, they bring with them a wide variety of prior experiences and knowledge, both cultural and academic.&nbsp; The process of teaching these students foundational principles of academics and preparing them to be successful in their subsequent is very connected to the scope of cognitive psychology, as outlined in this chapter.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The third reading, Introduction to Human Factors, highlights factors that will be discussed throughout the book and ignites interest in factors I hadn’t put much time into learning about or focusing on. Having worked as an elementary teacher, acute hospital staff, and 9-1-1 dispatcher, I can relate to many of the stressful situations described in the chapter and understand how processes that seemed efficient while being designed or even during testing, could become cumbersome during times of crisis when the user’s perception and decision making skills become altered by high levels of stress. I am excited to increase my depth of knowledge in human factors through this text during this semester.</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></div><div class="dbThreadDetailTreeRow db-message" id="layer_41_0" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.8px; padding-bottom: 3px;" title="Collapse Post"><div class="db-collapse-control" id="collExpMsgDiv__2121080_1" style="background: url(&quot;images/jagged.png&quot;) center center repeat-x transparent; height: 12px; margin: 0px auto; opacity: 0; text-align: center; transition: opacity 0.5s ease-in-out; width: 592.188px;"><a href="https://bb.its.iastate.edu/webapps/discussionboard/do/message?action=list_messages&amp;forum_id=_235964_1&amp;nav=discussion_board_entry&amp;conf_id=_159775_1&amp;course_id=_54913_1&amp;message_id=_2120989_1#" id="collExpMsg__2121080_1" role="button" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(42, 142, 193); border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-family: inherit; font-size: 10px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 1px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 9px; text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase;">COLLAPSE</a></div></div><div class="dbThreadMessage" id="message__2121080_1" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.8px;"><div class="dbThread" style="background: transparent; border-radius: 3px; border: 0px; box-shadow: none; margin: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="dbThreadInfo clearfix" style="color: #555555; float: right;"> <dl style="border: 0px; float: left; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12.16px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"></dl></div><div class="dbThreadBody" style="clear: both; outline: 0px; padding-bottom: 0.6em;" tabindex="0"><div class="vtbegenerated" style="background: transparent !important; font-size: small; margin: 0px !important; overflow-x: auto; padding: 0px !important;"><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">I agree with your assessment of Dix, Finlay,&nbsp;<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.6px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Aboud</span>&nbsp;&amp; Beale’s Intro. I also like the tripod analogy. In my experience, there are lots of disciplines within HCI and software development that tend to&nbsp;put more emphasis or weigh one aspect of a project as more important than the other. My guess is that many fields struggle with this same polarity, which may be counterproductive to successful projects and working relationships. Studying the cultivation of these types of relationships may be an interesting future study.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div style="border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15.6px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.3; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Sheila&nbsp;<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.6px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Simsarian</span>&nbsp;Webber and Catherine&nbsp;<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.6px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Durnell</span>&nbsp;<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15.6px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Cramton</span>&nbsp;do a study on the interpersonal relationships of development teams in the Journal of Business Research. The article is called,&nbsp;Relationships among geographic dispersion, team processes, and effectiveness in software development work teams. The article's focus is primarily on team effectiveness based on location, but there are points where they discuss more of the dynamics. If you've read other articles or books with similar dynamics or a focus more on the psychology aspect, I would be interested.&nbsp;</div><ul style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 1em 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 40px;"><li style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; list-style-position: outside; list-style-type: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Sheila&nbsp;</span><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Simsarian</span><span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">&nbsp;Webber and Catherine&nbsp;</span><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Durnell</span><span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">&nbsp;</span><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Cramton</span>&nbsp;<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">&nbsp;(June 2005)</span>.<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">&nbsp;</span>Volume 58, Issue 6, Pages 705-862.&nbsp;<span style="border: 0px; color: black; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Relationships among geographic dispersion, team processes, and effectiveness in software development work teams.</span>&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">http</span>://<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">www</span>.<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">sciencedirect</span>.com/science/article/<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">pii</span>/S0148296303002558</li></ul></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></form></div></div>Desarae Veithttps://plus.google.com/106589869680806481457noreply@blogger.com0